Covid-19

Plus, Australia’s Greens want renewables front and center of the post Covid-19 economy and Mexican plant owners are overturning a politically-motivated ban on clean energy, however, Indian developer Acme solar says pandemic delays warrant it reneging on the terms of the record-low solar price agreement it signed.

Acme Solar made headlines in 2018 when its offer to accept $0.0322354 per kilowatt-hour generated at a 600 MW solar farm planned in Rajasthan secured the project from federal body the Solar Energy Corporation of India. Now the developer wants to rip up the agreement, blaming Covid-19-related hold-ups.

U.S. thinktank the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis says the nation should reorder its power network to harness cheap, modular renewables after existing power station overcapacity was worsened by plunging electricity demand during the Covid-19 shutdown.

Cell supply shortages could kick-start manufacturing activity in India, EV car sales are braced for a fall while still gaining market share and a new date has been set for the world’s biggest solar trade show.

Quarterly new additions were 15% lower than in the October-to-December window. The France Territoire Solaire thinktank said the lower volumes could be explained by the initial impact of the coronavirus crisis.

The world’s solar superpower saw the amount of new capacity added in the first three months of the year fall 24% from the same period of 2019 as 1.75 TWh of solar electricity was curtailed, but the National Energy Administration expects both statistics to improve as China exits the public health crisis.

EV sales are set to be 1.7 million off because of the economic fallout of the Covid-19 crisis, however analyst BloombergNEF predicts that will be less of a hit than the anticipated fall in sales of conventional cars, increasing the penetration of electric models into the overall market.

Installers which took advantage of cheaply-priced government finance say customers affected by the Covid-19 crisis cannot afford to pay for the solar home systems they have rolled out while expanding renewables programs.

Pure EVs had begun to claim a rising market share before coronavirus containment measures decimated sales last month. Even in the face of an 88% monthly fall in EV sales from March to April, however, clean energy models fared better than petrol and diesel sales.

Minister of energy Fatih Dönmez announced the procurement exercise, which is part of a plan to relaunch the nation’s economy during the Covid-19 crisis.